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Following France: a new formula for military intervention

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By Jackson Webster:

French soldiers in Bamako, Mali. September 2013. Photo: MINUSMA: Marco Dormino (creative commons)
French soldiers in Bamako, Mali, in September 2013. Photo: MINUSMA: Marco Dormino (creative commons)

Since the end of the Cold War, American and European military forces have struggled to find a new purpose. Today’s military policy choices are driven by two conflicting philosophies.

The first is continued concentration on the maintenance of large conventional forces by NATO powers. Accompanying this maintenance of hard power capability is its frequent application since the mid-1990s in long-term military commitments to unconventional conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. Interventions of arguably limited success from Lebanon to Afghanistan, Iraq to Somalia are the most publicised and perhaps most controversial feature of many NATO member states’ foreign policies.

The second, more populist realm of thought is one of reluctance. Western voters, and consequentially the politicians which cater to them, speak vehemently against expensive wars on foreign soil. The Bush and Blair administrations were defined largely by their overseas entanglements, not by their domestic or diplomatic policies. If the West is to reconcile its competing paradigms concerning interventions and military action, it must look to a place that military thinkers rarely consider: France.

Over the past decade, Paris has slowly reasserted itself, primarily in Northern Africa and the Sahel, through a number of relatively quiet and relatively successful military interventions. French military capacity is often ignored in popular discourse; Paris’ capabilities include one of the world’s most modern naval and air forces and an average overseas deployment of 30,000 troops at any given time. France’s continued military presence in a number of outlying former colonial states affords Paris power-projection capabilities far beyond ‘France-Métropole’.

The causes of recent French military ventures have differed greatly from case to case, but they share three essential characteristics. Firstly, Paris generally pursues actions which receive global diplomatic approval. Both the Libyan and Malian interventions were sanctioned by UN resolutions and France achieved diplomatic consent for action from regional powers: the Arab League in the case of Libya and Nigeria, Chad, and Niger in the case of Mali. By exercising this kind of restraint, Paris is able to add political legitimacy to its applications of hard power in a way that American-style unilateral military deployments have not.

Secondly, the interventions themselves have been carried out by small numbers of elite forces with specific, tactical goals. French forces conduct combat operations with little pomp and circumstance. The press was initially not allowed to follow French special forces into the tribal Toureg regions of Mali and was only allowed to cover in earnest the insertion and departure of French forces in Bamako. Furthermore, French troops are generally not sent abroad for nation-building purposes. Paris gives its forces tactical objectives and withdraws once security is achieved.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Paris has only sought intervention when a viable power structure exists to take over once the presence of French troops has stabilised the situation. Due to the previously discussed sparse press coverage, France’s interventions are typically less concerned with performing a political stunt and instead focus on the limited goal of stability and security. This is most clearly exemplified by the choice to intervene in Chad in 1983-84, not on the basis of humanitarianism, but with the goal of ending violence and stabilising the local security situation. François Mitterand’s intervention in Chad saw a rapid deployment of 3500 French troops to draw a ‘line in the sand’ at the 16th parallel across which neither Libyan nor Chadian forces would be allowed to perform military operations.

The crucial aspect of Paris’ military adventures has been the viability of an exit strategy. American interventions in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq predated a clear understanding of strategies of limited warfare. In these examples, conventional forces were deployed with no ultimate vision for the operation beyond an initial conventional victory. This resulted in the all-too-familiar American exit strategy of first declaring victory, then unceremoniously ending the intervention, such as Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ blunder in Iraq.

With each case for post-colonial France, Paris has allowed for a locally-driven exit strategy. In Chad, the French ‘line in the sand’ created a de facto ceasefire line and quickly ended the conflict, preserving the sovereignty and stability of both states involved. In Mali, French troops are being replaced by ECOWAS forces and the Malian government in Bamako has successfully remained in power.

The French formula of low profile, low-troop commitments, exit-viable interventions should be the future of Western conventional military operations. These recent examples are especially appropriate to examine as the Syrian Civil War enters its fourth bloody year, and as the coalition attacks on ISIS have proved insufficient thus far. When the choice to avoid ground intervention in Syria is eventually examined by the academics of the future, the analysts will have to ask themselves what kind of forces would have been appropriate and if a viable exit strategy was ever possible. Many criticise the very institution of military intervention, but if Western military forces are to be worth the significant resources required to sustain them, policy-makers will have to assess how best to apply their tools at hand to assure stability in the international order.

Jackson Webster is a student of International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

The Paris Attacks: a threat to French unity

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By Deborah Asseraf:

The demonstration in the Place de la Republique, Paris, on 11 January. Photo: Olivier Ortelpa (creative commons)

As France mourns 17 of its citizens following the recent Paris attacks, hard times are also synonymous with national union. On 11 January 56 world leaders marched in Paris along with 3.7 million people to show their commitment to universal values such as freedom of speech and human dignity. Unanimous condemnation of the terror acts that occurred between 7-9 January transcends political divisions and ideologies. However the commemorations are likely to be subject to political appropriation by a range of actors and parties. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the spontaneous reaction animating civil society will result in any coherent long-term agenda.

A new form of terror

On 7 January, two masked gunmen stormed the offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo during an editorial meeting (11:30 am), killing 12 people. The paper is well known for its publication of the prophet Muhammad caricatures. In just a few minutes the assailants shot a maintenance worker, a police officer assigned as a bodyguard for the paper’s editor, seven journalists and caricaturists, a guest at the editorial meeting and a national police officer. Armed with AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun and an RPG launcher, the gunmen managed to escape by car and killed a wounded police officer lying on the pavement. The Kouachi brothers, who carried out the attack, escaped towards the Val de Marne, in the North-East of Paris. Taking a printing house, they resisted a siege by the police for hours in the afternoon of 9 January.

On 8 January, Amedy Coulibaly shot and killed a municipal police officer in Montrouge, south of Paris. The next day Coulibaly seized a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, a very quiet area in North Paris. Two people were shot as the gunman entered the store and two others during the three-hour hostage crisis. The police launched an assault against the assailant at the end of the afternoon at approximately the same time as the assault carried out against the Kouachi brothers.

The attacks have not been officially claimed by any terror organisation, suggesting the emergence a new form of terrorism that opens opportunities to individuals who are willing to die for a cause with no need to officially belong to a local or global movement. This operating mode is reminiscent of the 15 December Sydney hostage crisis, which involved a single individual who claimed he had links with the Islamic State. As Australian authorities fear copycat attacks, it seems legitimate for France to worry as well in a context where the range of possible threats is widening.

Blurry motives and difficult responses

What happened last week has been described as France’s 9/11, suggesting that the country has reached a critical turning point that will usher in a new era of war against its evil enemy. Nonetheless, the so-called ‘enemy’ seems hardly definable or reachable. Indeed, shedding light on the motives of the attack is difficult if not impossible. Recordings of conversations between Coulibaly and his Jewish hostages emerged in the media after the store’s telephone was left off the hook. They show a confused assailant who justifies his action by referring to France’s foreign policy, highlighting the fact that Muslims are being killed all around the world. He gives the examples of Mali and Syria, where France is part of the coalition against the Islamic State. In a video that emerged on 11 January, two days after his death, Coulibaly is seen pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed chief of the caliphate, in very poor Arabic.

As the motives of the attacks are blurry, finding long-term coherent responses is extremely difficult. Implementing surveillance policies is one thing but it does not help with tackling the other issue of radicalisation. In this regard, French statutory law has recently been adapted to the jihadist threat with an anti-terrorist bill passed in November 2014. On the one hand it allows authorities to confiscate passports and IDs of volunteers for jihad willing to leave for Syria and Iraq. On the other, it also creates a new kind of criminal offence: ‘individual terrorist enterprise’, which targets self-radicalized terrorists-to-be.

The Paris killings will also feed in to political discourses that are likely to gradually undermine national unity. On 11 January, about 4 million people marched through the streets of Paris and other French cities under the banner of democracy and freedom against terror and ‘barbarity’. Rather than presaging a new political path, the support showed in unity rallies throughout France will only be transient. It goes without saying that ‘islamophobia’ is on the rise as mosques are now being targeted all across France. An aggravated context of discrimination won’t solve the problem but rather anchor some of its causes. Nevertheless, the security question and the fight against an internal enemy may shape French politics for a long time to come.

Jewish emigration to Israel

The reasons that brought the terrorists to Charlie Hebdo are clear: killing journalists and their subversive ideas. They also shot police officers for what they epitomise: the idea of order and law enforcement. By contrast, the last main assault at the Hypercacher of Porte de Vincennes was aimed at killing Jews. Indeed, the Jewish community appears as a constant in the terrorist equation. Only two years after the Toulouse killings at the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah by a French Muslim extremist, Jews feel abandoned by authorities.

In Paris Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his respects to the victims of the kosher store at the Synagogue de la Victoire but also encouraged French Jews to make ‘aliyah’: which means ascend in Hebrew. According to Israeli leaders, French Jews are meant to emigrate to Israel as hostile Europe is not their home anymore. As a matter of fact, Jewish emigration has skyrocketed these past few years, reaching the peak of 6000 French Jews last year. As controversial as it sounds, the message got through. Because anti-semitism is on the rise, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the deployment of the army to support 4700 police agents to protect Jewish places of worship and schools. The government’s stance is aimed at reassuring French Jews, as shown in prime minister Manuel Valls’ speech at the Assemblée nationale.

France’s social fabric is loosening and its political context is deeply affected by recent events. Even though the union nationale is still being proclaimed, no solutions to the heightened tensions have yet been found. Not only do the French fear an internal enemy, but in the secular country of laïcité, religious communities are being set against each other. The prospect of appeasement seems distant.

Deborah Asseraf is a postgraduate student at Sciences Po, Paris, specializing in the field of public policy, and president of Sciences Po Public Affairs Master’s society. She is interested in international relations and politics.

The rise of the far right in France

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By Deborah Asseraf

File:Marine Le Pen banquet des Mille Paris XV l maitrier éléctions presidentielles.jpg

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced last June the banning of two far-right militant groups: L’Oeuvre Française (The French Work) and Jeunesses Nationalistes (Nationalist Youth), the youth wing of L’Oeuvre. The government is clearly trying to show that it will undermine all forms of extremism that represent a danger for the Republic. However, the tense climate in which political issues are shaped these days in France recalls the heyday of far-right groups in the 1930s. Indeed, the very act of disbanding extremist groups required the use of a law from 1936. It has been a long time since issues such threats to the social order by extremist groups has been on the political agenda. However, even if a parallel can be drawn it would be rather inaccurate to compare the 1930s too closely with contemporary France. The 2010s will be remembered for a tough economic downturn and the growth of extremism. To understand this trend there are two different areas to consider.

To begin with, it is fundamental to distinguish the changes occurring in the traditional French political chessboard from the groups evolving outside of it. There are daily issues highlighting the growing influence of far-right ideologies within the French political system and violent extremist right-wing groups becoming increasingly more visible on the political scene. These two distinct levels ground the contemporary far-right phenomenon. One of my teachers at Sciences Po Paris once observed that modern French politics had grown more peaceful over the past few decades; ideology was not as significant as it used to be. People no longer vote for an ideal model of society. They are not strongly right-wing or left-wing, as they used to be during the Cold War, for instance. He concluded by saying:‘If we were in the 1960s or 1970s when I was a student here, you would not have had reasoned political debates as you do now, you would literally have fought for your ideas’. I also thought ideas did not lead to violence anymore; I thought there was no ideological motivation behind violence in France. Violence such as expressed in riots seemed rather to be caused by social distress and delinquency. However, far-right ideology as a motive for violence as proclaimed by extremist groups made the headlines in spring 2013.

These groups became so visible this year that they completely reshaped the political agenda. Gay marriage became a matter of national identity; with anti-gay marriage protesters denouncing the bill using arguments based on natural law, recalling a deeply conservative vision of family as a unit of only a man and a woman. Created on the 24 March 2013 on the occasion of a demonstration against gay marriage, the Printemps Français (French Spring) surfaced as the most violent branch of the movement. Their manifesto brings together various elements of right-wing ideology from social conservatism to anti-globalisation. and does not acknowledge the legitimacy of the republican state. Their slogan is “On ne lâche rien” (We won’t give up), and protests continued even after the bill was passed. A second event highlighted the sudden visibility of far-right groups: the death of the left-wing ‘anti-fascist’ militant and Sciences Po student, Clément Méric, in early June. Allegedly struck in the face by a member of the Nationalist Youth during an altercation, he fell in the middle of a crowded street in Paris and died of his wounds. The Méric case has shaken French politics and was the principle factor that led to the banning of the Oeuvre Française and Jeunesses Nationalistes.

The rise of the far right in France does not only concern violent underground groups. It is linked to the crystallization of social frustration and the legitimization of its discourse. Recent national election results highlight the fact that the far right is not only gaining voters from the traditional right but also from the left. Opinion polls show the disaffection of the working class towards the left and the very use of the word “class” appears to have become somewhat absolete. The Parti Socialiste in France is often described as falsely left-wing, whilst hard left appears to be not about liberalism and the acceptance of the free-market, but rather a strong anti-globalisation stance. Jean Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche, Left Front) gathered 11% of the votes in the presidential election of 2012. In comparison, FN candidate Marine Le Pen won nearly twice as many votes (19%). What the FN programme offers is quintessentially populist: a denial of the overwhelming power of economic liberalism crossed with xenophobia. Whilst Mélenchon’s Left Front with its strong socialism seemed like a short-lived phenomenon, the political recipe of the FN has worked over the years. The far right took the sovereign, anti-globalisation vision of the hard left and added social conservatism. Those stakes grounded the shift in the working-class vote (29% FN) from the left to the far right that political analysts depict.

This observation requires nuancing: the droitisation (movement directed towards the right) of the working-class vote does not only benefit the far right but also the republican right. Droitisation was considered a major contribution to Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 victory. Sarkozy’s strength came from his capacity to gather together very different trends within the right, extending his political rhetoric to delicate issues that traditionally serve the interests of the far right: security, immigration and national identity. Thanks for this are also due to his campaign adviser Patrick Buisson, who comes from the UMP’s (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, Sarkozy’s Party) hardline conservative wing. This shift crystallised resentment and frustration, becoming cornerstones of the discourse and action of his government. By openly courting FN voters at the end of his 2012 campaign he legitimized the FN. The growing influence of the far right is, therefore, also due to a process of legitimization as the Front National (FN) has strived to become publicly acceptable. After its founder, the controversial Jean Marie Le Pen who had been convicted of racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust-denial over the past four decades, left the party to his daughter, the image of the FN changed considerably. Giving it a “modern” image, she stresses that FN is right-wing, not the “extreme” right. Marine Le Pen’s strategy was combined with the legitimization of the FN’s core issues at the top of the traditional republican right agenda.

This growing affinity is one of the scariest trends in the history of French right: the extremist party does no longer appears extreme and the boundaries between republican right and hard right have blurred. Extremism has not disappeared from the French or European political landscape. The far right phenomenon is not reduced to one party, its ideology has a broad influence that crosses political borders and is expressed in ballot boxes as well as in the streets of Paris.

Deborah Asseraf is a postgraduate student in Sciences Po Paris, specializing in the field of public policy, and president of Sciences Po Public Affairs Master’s society. She is interested international relations and politics.